Saturday, January 22, 2011

Moving on...

I think I mentioned in an earlier post that we went to our bank several weeks ago to get the money orders we needed to submit with our background check requests. We were appalled that our bank wanted to charge us about five bucks for a stinkin' money order when we could go down the street to a grocery or convenience store and snatch 'em up for 50 cents a pop. The bank teller said he understood that it's more expensive to get them there, but that they are refundable if something were to happen to them. Humph. We sauntered out of the bank and headed to a Food Lion and snatched up two for a buck.

Well, you know the rest...

The larger of the two money orders (of course!) somehow mysteriously disappeared. We thought we were out a hundred bucks because we didn't think it was refundable because we didn't get it from a bank. But alas, this isn't true!

I called Western Union yesterday (the money order was issued by them). Indeed the money order hasn't been cashed, so we can get a refund for it less a $15 processing fee (don't even get me started about processing fees. Seriously. What is the point?). So at least we can get $85 back of the $100 spent. So, the decision's been made. JD and I will request a refund (and wait 30 days for it...) on Monday and on Tuesday, we're headed back over to the county offices to be fingerprinted again and then to...hmm...will it be our bank or a grocery store?...get another money order. We'll run by our social worker's office to have the background check signed off on and then hand deliver the whole thing to the Office of Background Investigations and hopefully be done with this hang up. Prayerfully our social worker's request for expedition will be approved and we won't have to wait up to three weeks for it to come back (and for our home study to be complete). The home study being stalled holds up our ability to apply to the Abba Fund which holds up our ability to move to the next phase (the country phase) where we can finally know who our 'new kids' are!